The site integrates the latest data the federal responders have about the oil spill’s trajectory with fishery area closures, wildlife data and place-based Gulf Coast resources — such as pinpointed locations of oiled shoreline and current positions of deployed research ships — into one customizable interactive map.

NYTimes Map – Looks like a very comprehensive site that includes maps of where oil is and where oil has made landfall along with other information about efforts to stop the leak, effects on wildlife, and more.

Toxic chemicals are everywhere

Many toxic chemicals are found in the bodies of virtually every person on the planet, even those living in remote communities. In fact, the blood of nearly every American contains hundreds of chemicals, including those used in flame retardants, food packaging and even rocket fuel.

The “I Am Not a Guinea Pig” campaign is aimed at helping to ensure that the voices of millions of Americans who are concerned about and affected by exposures to untested and unsafe chemicals are heard as Congress begins the first serious effort to overhaul the 34-year-old TSCA.

The campaign’s goal is to engage Americans across the country to push for substantive reform of our toxic chemicals law.

To encourage support for a strong bill, EDF has joined with other members of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition that EDF helped found that includes over 200 health and environmental groups representing 11 million people across the nation. Key coalition partners in EDF’s campaign include:

In addition to its Toxic Ignorance, EDF has published more reports recently

EDF’s 2007 report Not That Innocent documented the urgent need for policy reform. Our analysis contrasted U.S. policies with those in Canada and the European Union and identified “best practices” culled from all three systems that together create a vision for future U.S. chemicals policy.

Our September 2008 report Across the Pond assessed one of the first impacts that the new European regulation called REACH will have on U.S. companies and chemicals: REACH’s identification of “substances of very high concern.”

EDF scientist Richard Denison’s paper Ten Essential Elements in TSCA Reform, published in January 2009 in the Environmental Law Reporter, laid out a blueprint for new legislation to replace the outmoded Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.

Stop assigning low-priority rankings to chemicals, especially those with data gaps in the most basic, minimum set of screening-level hazard data. As we said before, it’s one thing for EPA to identify as high-hazard those chemicals where, despite the data gaps, available data demonstrate high toxicity. It’s quite another for EPA to effectively exonerate chemicals as low-hazard or low-priority when not even a bare-minimum data set is available for them.

Adopt a health-protective approach to hazard screening: Where data are uncertain, of questionable quality or equivocal, assume a hazard exists until and unless a chemical’s manufacturer provides the data to show otherwise.

About ATSDR

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a federal public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ATSDR’s mission is to determine human health effects associated with toxic exposures, prevent continued exposures, and mitigate associated human health risks at Superfund sites.

While the Tox Profiles cover very nasty chemicals, the irony of this is that these are chemicals found at Superfund sites (of which, according to ATSDR, there are about 1,200). However, many of these same chemicals are still being manufactured (as well as chemicals for which we have even less data than the Tox Profile ones!) in plants all over the country and the number of places probably far exceeds 1,200.